All posts tagged: drawing

When Katka Adams and her mother arrived in Australia as refugees they didn’t speak a word of English. It was 1969 and Katka was seven years old. Escaping the political repression of communism in Prague, Katka and her mother moved through several migrant hostels, including Bonegilla near Albury-Wodonga, before settling in Melbourne. “They just stuck me in a class of regular kids. I had to relearn my whole way of writing, and I didn’t understand what the words meant”, says Katka, in her now strong, easy Australian accent. The language barrier meant Katka spent a lot of time alone drawing, even as a young child, and developed a fondness for art that never wavered. Finishing high school in Sydney, Katka had her heart set on going to art school. “The career adviser said, ‘You’ve really got to look at your other options’, and I said, ‘what other options, there are no other options!’” It is now 20 years since Katka and her husband, Russell, bought their small settler’s cottage on the eastern edge of Clunes. …